Daniel Staebe has been promoted to the role of Director. With experience spanning more than two decades, Daniel has worked extensively on several of the practice’s award-winning public building and residential apartment developments. As an integral part of the CEO Forum, Daniel uses his strong people management skills to act as a mentor and support person to many staff members.

Two team members have been promoted to the role of Senior Associate – Michael Rogers and Pip Bowling. Pip has worked on a range of large, multi-disciplinary infrastructure and commercial projects, and continues to use her solid project management skills on many of AJ+C’s projects.

Michael has been with AJ+C since 1997, working on diverse residential and commercial projects across Sydney. Michael was instrumental in delivering the schools project last year, and assisted in running our award winning Pavilions on the Park project.

Brian Mariotti and Paul Huxtable have earned the new title of Associate. Brian has a natural affinity towards people management & has proven himself on a variety of projects during his time at AJ+C.

Paul is a key member of the aged care team, and has strong technical knowledge which he used to deliver the social housing project in 2009/10. Chris Taylor, who has successfully led the Edith Cowan University project - a significant achievement at a Consultant level – has been promoted to Senior Consultant.

The success of AJ+C is due to our talented staff. We congratulate and thank these valuable team members for their dedication and contribution to the practice.

Images:
Top row, left to right: Brian Mariotti, Paul Huxtable, Chris Taylor
Bottom row, left to right: Pip Bowling, Michael Rogers, Daniel Staebe

The UDIA Awards are a high profile annual program that highlights and rewards innovation, sustainability and industry leadership within the urban development industry.

The Awards also highlight the contribution made by the consulting professions such as architects, environmentalists, engineers and planners.

The judging panel, consisting of Bob Hayward, Peter Andrews, Jim Barrett and Alan Zammit, made the following comments about Pavilions on the Park:

“Located close to the major transport hub of St Leonards, this development successfully addresses the constraints of a narrow parcel of land adjoining the main north shore rail line, by creating a medium rise apartment complex facing Newlands Park. Pavilions on the Park houses 195 apartments in a mix of one, two and three bedrooms, with internal and external living spaces orientated towards the park. The design achieves a degree of choice in apartment layouts.

The massing of the buildings are highly articulated and well set back from the street creating a scale, which sits comfortably with the surrounding residential areas. The landscape setback becomes an extension to the park and further integrates the building within its park setting.”

UDIA NSW President, Judy McKittrick congratulated the winners, recognising them as the “very best in urban development in NSW.”

Architects Allen Jack+Cottier (AJ+C) worked closely with developers Australand through all phases of the project. Stage one, consisting of 195 apartments, was completed in the first half of 2009 at a cost of $55 million. The development experienced strong sales and market appeal in a depressed market.

The AIB Professional Excellence in Building Awards recognise the highest standards of building and construction management, research and development of building projects in Australia.

Criteria for the awards include innovations developed to overcome difficulties; the builder’s relationship with the client, architect, authorities, community and workforce; and the quality of the completed project.

Located at Stanwell Park near Wollongong, NSW, Hillcrest Village is a unique retirement village containing 24 high-quality independent living units carved into a bushland escarpment.

Builders Zadro Constructions worked closely with architects Allen Jack+Cottier, and client United Protestant Association of NSW, to achieve the finished product.

A representative from Zadro Constructions said “The enjoyment, pride and achievement comes from the great relationship and cooperation we had with our clients and design teams. We all worked together on the basis of what was best for the project.

It is not always that client, architect and builder can all come together as one team and crystallise a fantastic result. The award is a great feat, up against tough competition, but it is really recognition of a job well done by all, and the team members should be congratulated for the fantastic results for a project we are very proud of.”

The Hillcrest Village development is now nominated for the national AIB “Excellence in Building” Award, to be held in Melbourne in September 2010.

Along with projects from China, the Philippines and Singapore, Rouse Hill Town Centre was one of five winners of an Urban Land Institute (ULI) Award for Excellence: Asia Pacific Region.

The award recognises the full development process of a project, not just its architecture or design. Criteria for the awards include leadership, contribution to the community, innovations, public/private partnership, environmental protection and enhancement, response to societal needs and financial viability.

Rouse Hill Town Centre is a remarkable example of Australian team work, operating at the highest professional level.

A joint venture project between developers GPT and Lend Lease, the masterplanning was prepared by Civitas Urban Design and Planning in conjunction with the NSW Department of Planning and Landcom, while the architecture was delivered by a consortium of three architectural firms – Allen Jack+Cottier, Group GSA and Rice Daubney.

Rouse Hill Town Centre is an ecologically-conscious regional shopping centre, featuring over 220 retailers, 104 apartments and 2800 sqm of office space.

Founded in 1936, ULI is the preeminent, multidisciplinary real estate forum, providing leadership in the responsible use of land and in creating and sustaining thriving communities worldwide.

The Awards for Excellence, established in 1979, are based on the Institute’s guiding principle that the achievement of excellence in land use practice should be recognised and rewarded.

“The winners are great examples of success that showcase creativity, innovation, and long-term thinking,” said Jury Chairman Nicholas Brooke. “Perhaps now more than ever, the ULI Awards for Excellence program reminds us of the key difference that responsible land use development can make, in terms of longevity and overall community sustainability.”

The ULI prize adds to the list of awards already bestowed on Rouse Hill Town Centre including an Award for Excellence and Innovation (in two categories) from the Property Council of Australia, and one of the industry’s highest accolades, the Lloyd Rees Award for Urban Design from the
Australian Institute of Architects.

In May 2010, AJ+C won an international competition to master-plan a new community on an 1800 hectare site to the west of the old walled city of Xi’an.

Straddling the Feng River, the winning master plan uses the principle of ensuring the river’s ecological sustainability as the project’s design generator.

Rather than managing the flooding river with dams and levy banks, the design aims to use the natural benefits of the flood zones to create positive amenity for the site and its new occupants.

Wetlands on the east bank absorb run-off in flood periods, while a golf course occupies the unbuildable flood zone to the west.
Fingers of river feed through into the residential heart of the development, bringing an organic pattern of water and green space to lighten the formality of the residential blocks.

AJ+C cleverly used the Chinese character for Feng, the name of the river, to illustrate the design concept of smaller fingers of water feeding out horizontally from the mother river.

The Grand Canal, linking Hangzhou in the south with Beijing in the north, is the longest canal in the world, covering 1776 km, and one of the oldest, dating back to the 5th century BC.

The design, submitted in conjunction with ASA Architects, uses the Grand Canal as its design source. An artificial channel draws water from the Grand Canal into the site forming a major axis which leads directly to the grand atrium of the hotel.

Water is the key to moving through the site. The intersection of waterway and hotel lobby forms the focus of this project and embodies a key concept of the Chinese landscape; the dialogue between the elements of mountain and water, in this case the mountains being represented by the tall buildings.

Lower rise buildings curve themselves according to the flow of the stream from the Grand Canal in a welcoming gesture while being architecturally expressed as contrasting elements to the ‘mountains’. The many intersections between water and buildings provide opportunities for creating a variety of landscaped spaces which are differentiated by contrasting textures and patterns.

As the most prominent site element, the Grand Canal also embodies the essence of the ecological component of the site. While the plan doesn’t try to pretend that large scale buildings and developments can be ecological, the design does recognize that many ecological design actions can be taken to reduce negative environmental effects and thus have less impact on a Greenfield site than a typical development.

The winning plan uses roof gardens, water harvesting, reed ponds, grey water re-cycling and high energy efficient double glazing systems.

AJ+C’s commended design for The Village, Balgowlah, introduces a complex, mixed-use development of shopping centre, 234 residential apartments and community facilities into a typical Sydney suburb, and transforms it. The northern beaches suburb is no longer a place to drive through past a strip of street-front shops, but is a destination in its own right with an urbane focal point.

The jury recognised the importance of the project as representing “a relevant typology for future developments integrating a major shopping centre with complementary uses in the suburban context, and achieves successful urban densification, which must be embraced by architects and allied professions in the future.”

AJ+C’s Mixed Use Master Plan DA was approved in 2005 following extensive community consultation. The successful scheme addressed both the community’s concerns regarding height, density, loss of views and traffic generation while achieving Stockland’s development criteria. In the words of the Awards Jury: “The challenge of the project was to accommodate the very large development footprint of the shopping centre without alienating the existing fine-grain scale of the local area.”

The design includes eight cascading residential towers of varying forms and sizes above a retail and car park podium, which is cleverly hidden below ground level to exploit the slope across the site. The Jury recognised that “the well-mediated scale of the four-to-eight-storey residential buildings over the shopping centre protects the amenity and privacy of the surrounding residential development.”

Overall, the project was commended as exemplifying “a competent solution to a complex, mixed-use development.”

WIN Stadium is located on the eastern side of Harbour Street between Burelli Street and Stewart Street. It is adjacent to the WIN Entertainment Centre (WEC) and within 150 metres of the surf at City Beach in Wollongong. The Western Grandstand redevelopment will contain 6,000 seats, new corporate entertainment facilities, ticketing box offices and turnstiles, concession areas, toilets, player dug outs, as well as referee and media facilities compliant with the National Rugby League standards. The quality of the new facilities will change the experience of attending functions, games and events at WIN Stadium with the real winners of the new design being the fans.

“The new Grandstand will be seen as the proscenium arch between the north and south stadium, with a lightweight ephemeral roof seemingly floating from one end of the field to the other. The orientation also provides shade from the afternoon sun and glare,” says AJ+C project architect John Gunnell.

This isn’t the first time AJ+C have tackled the design of sporting facilities. Current and past AJ+C projects include the pit and spectator facilities at Mount Panorama, Bathurst; an Aquatic Centre in the Blue Mountains, and a range of sports and recreation halls for the NSW Department of Sports and Recreation, one of which (Berry Sports Hall) won best sports building in the World Architecture Festival, 2009.

“AJ+C are applying a high level of attention to detail for it to work perfectly, and to become a poetic addition to this beautiful site, much like we did with Berry Sports Hall,” said AJ+C Principal, Michael Heenan.

“It has been a great collaboration with the Stuart Barnes, Peter Lanyon and the Board of the Illawarra Venues Authority,” he added.

Googong is a $1.6 billion CIC Australia development located on a 780 hectare site just 16km south-east of Parliament House in Canberra. This new, totally self-contained township is set to establish the benchmark for urban development and community creation.

The Googong community will consist of five connected neighbourhoods with a variety of housing styles, parklands and community facilities. The Neighbourhood 1A Community Clubhouse is the first of these community facilities to be designed and built.

“CIC Australia had a vision for this building to become the hub of this new neighbourhood in Googong, to be an integral part of establishing a community on a green-field site. This vision was foremost in our mind as we embarked on the design process,” says Project Director Jane Johnson. “The site itself was the other primary design cue. Our competition scheme grew out of both the natural landscape - a predominantly horizontal field with gentle undulations; and proposed built landscape – characterised by a network of intersecting boulevards and open spaces.”

CIC Australia were impressed with AJ+C’s enthusiasm, passion and knowledge of the site. “[CIC] selected the concept that best captured the essence of the original brief and vision for Googong” explains Lindsay Hunter, Project Manager, CIC Australia. “[AJ+C] is the most capable architectural firm to work in collaboration with us to achieve the desired outcome.”

AJ+C’s competition scheme was a building which featured a simple, predominantly horizontal roof-line and a floor plan which takes advantage of panoramic views. The key to this truly sustainable building is to ‘do more with less’ incorporating sound passive solar design principles. Once these fundamentals are in place, the active sustainable building components added to the base building are then working to their optimum capacity.

Jane and project architect Lilian Tan are currently embarking on a new concept design, now that the brief and site constraints have been reconfirmed.